The deck that plays the most point in total usually wins? Not really a big surprise there. Of course it's a game of resources and the aim is to win 2 rounds narrowly and lose 1 by a lot. But at the end of the day, decks that can play more points are pretty much just better.

They don't deny it exists and they haven't refused to talk about it. Watch/listen to a few podcasts with CDPR staff as guests in the past, they've always discussed it and engaged with the topic.

Fact is, no-one has come up with a good solution that doesn't have its own problems. The likely best solution is to make the game less reliant on the final play. You can argue as to whether that is being achieved or not. The change to weather from closed beta was hugely positive, whereas cards like Ciri Nova were negative.

This is my first season playing. I really wanted to hit rank 20 for the avatar. I'm stuck at 3900, I might be able to get to 4000 for rank 19, but rank 20 will be almost impossible unless I grind a ton of barrels to try and assemble a meta dwarf deck.

Rank 20 is a fairly difficult mark to hit even in a 2 month season. Once you pass 4k you lose more points than you gain and the winrate required to just maintain your MMR constantly increases. Don't beat yourself up about probably not getting there.

As for the season rewards, they have indicated it will likely be an annual cycle, so just wait until you're really good and have a solid collection then crush the ladder next January....

Unless the ogroids are going to be viable in consume, they won't be used alongside the others. I have gotten over 20 value with it consistently, just because you haven't played it doesnt mean someone else hasn't figured out how to use it.

That's just untrue.
Consume is one of the most unique archetypes I've ever played in a card game. I just understand the difference between adjusting something to open design space, and the end of the world.

In that case i guess its the server being unstable and disconnecting players with the higher latency/ping (i am guessing the main server is eu somewhere).
Or else its some in game bug, but i doubt it since i did restart and wasn't facing the problem earlier while playing gwent today.

I see opponents DC all the time. The only time it happens to me it's my internet that drops out. I'm in Australia and servers are in Europe so you'd expect I'd be more likely to have issues than other people, but apparently not

Card Advantage is incredibly powerful and as the average value of cards increases, the downside to the silver spies was decreasing and most hadn't been changed for quite a while.
You could still argue that some are better than others and should be different point values, but I'm sure it's fine.

My next trip to Europe will almost certainly involve some Poland. There's so many countries to visit and so little time/money but CDPR has actually pushed it over the top.
Sorry Scandinavia/France, going to Poland now!

Be happy, so you can prevent bein hit by the paris-syndrom. On another note, there are way more beautiful castles in europe. If you need some inspiration, I can share a post about some in germany. But they are just some others between the countless sites here. Recently been to croatia where a lot of Game of Thrones scenes were filmed, also worth a visit.

Oh it's not about the location they've cast from. I made my post before I even watched the vod.
It's more that I have a long list of places to visit and have trouble deciding which to go to. Love of CDPR has just pushed Poland ahead of a few other places.

It's possible you're doing things like not fabricating as many claims as possible on enemies, making your peace deals more expensive, not milking your estates for monarch points regularly, not taking ideas that reduce coring/diplo annex cost, Teching up when you are missing institutions instead of waiting, disinheriting bad heirs and just in general not being as economically efficient and lacking cash for advisors.
Without knowing more details it's hard to diagnose.

I think it's an incredibly unlikely idea because it's a poor business decision. The whole idea behind card packs/kegs is that you give people a large number of items they don't want alongside the ones they do want, so they need to buy more.